Tag Archives | France

Begun, the resource wars have. (Okay, they’ve been going on for a long time, but I’m not missing a chance to use a Star Wars joke – even if it’s from the prequels.) Anyway, read the story and check out the report. Your mileage may vary…

The UK will run out of its own gas, coal, and oil within the next five years, according to a report released by the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. And France, which continues to rely heavily on nuclear energy, could run out of its remaining fossils fuels within the next year, reports the BBC. This means that the two countries could soon become completely reliant on global fossil fuel suppliers such as Russia, Norway, and Qatar.

THE UK HAS 4.5 YEARS OF COAL LEFT

The report, which outlines worldwide fossil fuel vulnerabilities, paints a varying picture of Europe’s natural resources. Given the UK’s current rate of fossil fuel consumption and its current known reserves, the country is said to have 5.2 years of oil, 4.5 years of coal, and three years of gas left.

An unnamed priest affiliated with the breakaway Catholic sect The Society of St. Pius X has been charged with the 2010 rape and torture of three French schoolteachers during an “exorcism”. Authorities will not name the priest’s name for fear that doing so may identify the victims.

The Society of St. Pius X is a radical traditionalist Catholic splinter group and is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. Its members, in turn, reject the authority of the Pope. The Society has faced much criticism over the years from people who consider its teachings anti-Semitic and reactionary: Founder Marcel Lefebvre was vocal in his praise of France’s Vichy government and advocacy for the return of absolute monarchy.

Police say the priest raped three women in the autumn of 2010 after he met them at the private religious school Ecole Notre-Dame-de-la Sablonniere in Goussonville, west of Paris, which he was running at the time, according to French media reports.

“Yes,” said O’Brien, “we can turn it off. We have that privilege.” — Orwell, 1984

“Spying between friends, that’s just not done.” —Angela Merkel

The government has spied on me since 9/11. And I’m tired of it.

So I’m running for President of France. (Hang on, mes amis. I’ll explain in a minute.)

It’s not the lack of privacy. As a New Yorker, I’m used to that. I’m sick of the loud clicks on my phone and the ridiculous extra voices (“Do you think he can hear me?”). The inordinate volume of dropped calls. Emails that vanish from my inbox and reappear, sometimes in the wrong folder days later — or never.

One of the most amazing aspects of the resource wars is that within their own countries, most western powers have been able to stifle opposition for their participation, not to mention being able to suppress any real criticism of how they conduct themselves based on the laws of war.

“Everyone must be entitled to benefit from fundamental judicial guarantees. No one must be sentenced without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court. No one must be held responsible for an act he has not committed. No one must be subjected to physical or mental torture, corporal punishment or cruel or degrading treatment.”

Anaïs Nin was an American born to Hispanic/Cuban parents in France on February 21, 1903. Although we associate the author with Paris, she spent most of her life living in the U.S.
A writer of essays, short stories and novels, Nin's literary triumph was the publication of her diaries which chronicled more than six decades of experiences. Nin carried on a famous affair with author Henry Miller and it was during her time with him that the pair both started writing erotica to make ends meet. In the Paris of the 1930's, enterprising publishers cultivated collectors of forbidden writing and paid authors well and quickly for custom-crafted smut. Nin was a pioneer as one of the first women to ply the dirty book trade and she eventually let the works be collected and published widely under the titles Delta of Venus and Little Birds. She's considered to be among the best writers of the female sexual experience.
Along with Miller, Nin became a counterculture hero during the unrest of the 1960's. While Miller championed freedom of libido in his writing and fought for free of speech in his battles against censorship, Nin was perceived as the kind of strong, talented, liberated woman that the just-budding feminist movement was still trying to articulate. While she became a popular lecturer at universities, Nin never became involved in radical politics. It seemed she was always a lover more than a fighter. Nin died of cancer in 1977.
Here is the woman herself as she appeared in Kenneth Anger's The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in 1954
Stay Awake!
Joe Nolan

The name of the game when it comes to investing in the markets is that you must not only be ahead of inflation but you must also beat the averages, exceeding the normal rate of return. If you don’t do both then you are neither protecting nor accumulating capital, i.e., in the limit you will lose your wealth. This principle also applies to nations.

“French companies must go on the offensive and fight the growing influence of rival China for a stake in Africa’s increasingly competitive markets, France’s Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said on Saturday…

“‘It’s evident that China is more and more present in Africa…(French) companies that have the means must go on the offensive.

Luckily here in America we still have the freedom to unknowingly drink from hormone-disrupting soda bottles. AFP reports:

The French parliament voted Thursday to ban the use of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical thought to have a toxic effect on the brain and nervous system, in baby food packaging next year and all food containers in 2015.

The chemical is used in “polycarbonate” types of hard plastic bottles and as a protective lining in food and beverage cans. It became a concern following evidence in lab animals of a toxic effect on the brain and nervous system. Some studies have found a link between exposure to BPA and coronary heart disease and reproductive disorders.

Several countries have introduced voluntary measures or laws to stop the manufacture of baby bottles with BPA and published guidelines on safer use of the containers. In June 2010, the French parliament banned BPA-containing baby bottles.

An estimated 20,000 true believers have already flocked to a village at the base of the eerie and beautiful Pic de Bugarach in the belief that the mountain contains an alien spacecraft which will emerge on December 21 and rescue nearby humans from the end of the world.

However, your shot at extraterrestrial salvation is over, as French authorities are now blockading the area, the Daily Mail reports:

French officials have banned access to the Pic de Bugarach to avoid a rush of New Age fanatics, sightseers and, above all, journalists [due to] the rumour that the mountain in south-west France will burst open on December 21st revealing an alien spaceship which will carry nearby humans to safety.

A hundred police and firefighters will also control approaches to the tiny village of the same name at the foot of the mountain, and if too many people turn up, they will block access there too.

Long distance strategic communication via bird may seem obsolete by a hundred years or so, but pigeon squadrons are quietly being maintained and could one day be essential in calamitous conditions, the Wall Street Journal writes:

Glorified for their roles in World War I, pigeon squadrons have long been removed from active duty because of the introduction of more reliable, all-weather communication systems. And yet the French Defense Ministry still operates a military dovecote—Europe’s last—with 150 birds drafted into the 8th regiment for communication and transmission.

The corporal [who] sees to their upkeep and training draws hawkish scenarios—a nuclear catastrophe, a hurricane, a war—where racing homers would be the last-resort messaging network. In the Syrian city of Homs, insurgents defying the regime of President Bashar al-Assad are relying on carrier pigeons to communicate because their walkie-talkies are out of reach, he says.

Last year, Mr. Decool became concerned that France could be outdone in carrier-pigeon expertise by China, which maintains a platoon of 50,000 birds with 1,100 trainers for communication in border and coastal areas, according to the Chinese Ministry of National Defense.